


retrouvailles

by smallblueandloud



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Fluff, Getting Together, Multi, Polyamory, This Relationship Has One Braincell And Her Name Is Cosette, i literally did not pay attention to ANY form of canon besides the OBCR, so uh. if that is something that bothers you?, Éponine Thénardier Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25966885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallblueandloud/pseuds/smallblueandloud
Summary: “Cosette-” says Éponine. She’s got a hand over her ribs, like she’s in pain. Her clothing is filthy, like Cosette’s father’s, and she has a cap over her hair, and her eyes are wide like she wasn’t expecting this, even though she must have known whose house this is and she must have heard Cosette’s father call for Cosette just a few moments ago.Cosette has never seen anything more beautiful.(or, cosette's boyfriend turns out to be in love with her childhood sweetheart. everything is beautiful and nothing hurts)
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy/Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	retrouvailles

**Author's Note:**

> *kicks down your door* DO YOU FIND YOURSELF WANTING TO BE EMOTIONAL ANOTHER OBSCURE OT3? WELL, HAVE I GOT THE STUFF FOR YOU!
> 
> shoutout to the lesbean for getting me to listen to a real version of the soundtrack that didn't come from the movie, then encouraging this hyperfixation, beta reading this fic for me, helping with the title, and laughing at my jokes. it was a fun time writing this! thanks for being excited about it too.
> 
> also thank you to saecookie on tumblr for helping me with french endearments! she is a really lovely person and you should check out her blog!
> 
> generally i use song lyrics to title things, but i listened to les mis the whole time i was writing this so i have.... approximately zero songs to associate with these characters, lmao. (please drop song recs in the comments if you have any!) as it is, lesbean suggested using one of those words that doesn't translate into english, and of course it had to be this one. in my head these three live happily together in poly love forever, and i am Not Deviating From That. please note that i completely ignored... most of canon to write this, so éponine and cosette were _not_ enemies when they were kids! stop pitting abused children against each other 2k20!!

Their noses are nearly touching through the fence when there’s a shout from the other end of the street. Both Cosette and Marius jerk back.

“What was that?” she asks, craning her head to see what’s going on. A group of dark figures seem to be scattering.

Marius glances to the side. “Éponine must have scared them away. My friend Éponine-” he says, turning back to her, “-she’s the one who found you. My dearest friend. She’s always saving my hind.”

“Éponine-” repeats Cosette. She once knew someone named Éponine.

It’s been ten years. She hasn’t gone a week without thinking of her, but Cosette is in Paris, in a rich house, with a father who’s most certainly using a false name.

Éponine - _Cosette’s_ Éponine - is far away, probably still scrubbing the floor of her father’s inn. Far away from Paris.

Marius’ friend cannot be her Éponine. It’s impossible.

Still, she strains for a glimpse of the end of the street. There are only two figures there: one tall and one short, most likely a man and a girl. The man is holding onto the girl’s wrist, it seems, but it’s dark and Cosette can’t make out any details.

She holds her breath and listens. “I’ll make _you_ scream.” It’s being hissed - could be an innuendo, but the way it’s said...

Something is familiar.

The girl’s face turns and catches the light of the streetlight. It’s only for a second, but it’s enough. She’s grown, of course, but it doesn’t matter. Cosette would know her in ten, twenty, one hundred years.

Éponine.

 _Her_ Éponine.

The voice- it must be Thénardier. Cosette has been threatened like that before. She _knows_ that voice, knows that threat, knows what happens to little girls who cry or spoil the con.

Éponine warned them someone was coming. Monsieur Thénardier was one of the dark figures in the night.

Éponine warned them her _father_ was coming.

Cosette turns back to Marius, who’s staring at her face. She loves him more than life itself - she understands what he's feeling, the urge to block out the rest of the world and stay here, now, in this bubble they’re standing in. But he hasn’t been paying attention. He’ll probably never know what Éponine just did for them.

Cosette understands what Éponine has just done. All the love she’s been holding for ten years blooms inside her heart, and she needs to tell him- she needs to find her- she needs to hold them both. Éponine and Marius found each other. Her Éponine, her Marius, found each other. That must mean something. There must be something of God in this, in the way that Marius is looking at her now.

“Someone’s coming-” he says, and oh, Cosette in turn was distracted staring at his face. “Someone is near. Let’s not be seen. I will send a note,” he promises, reaching through the gate to grasp her hand and squeeze, once. “Let’s not be seen.”

With that, he’s gone. Cosette turns around and has just enough time to straighten her hair before her father bursts through the back door. He looks panicked, the way that he’s looked all day.

Since they got home from the market.

“My God, Cosette-” he says, rushing forward to pull her into his arms. “I heard a cry in the dark.”

Cosette pulls back, takes a deep breath, and plays the little girl. “That was my cry you heard, Papa. There were some men in the dark.”

“My child, are you hurt?”

She smiles at him - slightly - and pulls her hands up in front of her, worrying one fingernail in a charade of nervousness. Just enough to make him think she’s innocent. Too much will make him suspicious. “There were three men in the street. They ran when they heard my cry.”

If she’s lucky, he’ll track down Thénardier. But it’s Paris, in the middle of the night, and Marius has told her that things are brewing. Her father will probably let things lie, maybe forbid her from coming into the garden at night. But that won’t matter - she will find other ways to meet.

“These are the shadows of the past,” mutters her father.

Then he looks up, his face hardening. “It must be Javert. He’s found us at last. We must run, Cosette. Tomorrow to Calais, then a ship across the sea.”

“No-” says Cosette, her heart dropping into her stomach. Never, not once, have things backfired this dramatically, this quickly. “No.”

“No complaints,” he says, putting up a hand. She knows that look. That’s the most terrible look - the unmovable resolve, the one that means she still doesn’t know anything about his past before he promised her mother he would care for her. The resolve even she cannot crack. “Go prepare. We leave tomorrow.”

“ _No-”_ says Cosette, knowing it won’t help but unable to stop herself. She lets herself be guided into the house, but she barely pays attention. She’s going to lose Marius. Worse, she’s going to lose Éponine. She hasn’t even gotten to speak with her.

She can’t let this happen. She can’t- She’ll figure out some way to stop him. She _must._

In the meantime, she lets herself be taken to her room.

* * *

The news comes the next day. There’s a barricade in Rue de Villette, and the people are calling for the liberation of the people of France. They ask the rest of Paris to rise up.

The housekeeper, telling her the news, laughs.

Cosette, thinking of Marius, does not.

She keeps to her room. The last thing she needs is for her father to be _more_ nervous today. Maybe he won’t want them to travel during such turbulent times. Maybe he will realize he’s being foolish. Maybe he will finally, finally tell her what he’s so afraid of.

 _Ha,_ she thinks, and watches the soldiers march outside, headed to the barricade. She curses every one of them with the words that Éponine taught her when they were children, and a few more besides, and prays for Marius.

Cosette doesn’t know where Éponine is. Cosette doesn’t know what she’s doing. Thénardier was always good at staying out of trouble, but he might have left Éponine to fend for herself after last night. He did that to Cosette on occasion, and Éponine is nearly grown now: it’s barely cruel at her age.

She knows where Marius is. She’s trying not to think about it.

She folds her clothes, packs them away, then pulls them all out and folds them again. She has books she can be reading, embroidery she could practice- for God’s sake, she has a window to watch, with history certainly happening outside. But Paris will not rise with the revolutionaries. More and more soldiers march down their street and Cosette does not want to watch them approach Marius - and possibly Éponine.

She closes her window and straightens the covers on her bed. The cross on her wall looks down at her and she considers throwing it down the stairs. Eventually she resolves not to look at it all. The temptation is too dangerous, and God can be cruel but not as he is vindictive.

In the early afternoon, her father comes to her door. “Cosette-” he says, and stops. He’s leaning against the doorway as if he needs it to support his weight. “Cosette, I am going out.”

“What?” she asks. “We aren’t-” She stops herself just in time. If he doesn’t want them to leave today, she won’t remind him. “Will you be safe?”

He’s a stubborn man, a prideful man, who will always see her as a little girl. But he’s her father. He has cared for her in a way that few men would. And the streets are dangerous today.

“I will be fine,” he says, and reaches out to touch her chin. “I can care for myself, child.”

There’s a letter clutched in his other hand. Cosette remembers, with sudden fear, that Marius had promised to send her a note. It’s late afternoon and she’s gotten nothing.

 _He is busy,_ she reminds herself. _Let him focus on staying alive._

“When will you be back?”

“I-” says her father. He rarely hesitates, but he is now. She doesn’t know what this means, whether it has to do with the ever-present Javert, but she lets him do it. “I do not know. Don’t leave the house, Cosette.”

“I won’t,” she swears. The streets are dangerous, especially for beautiful women in white dresses, and she’s smart enough to keep the gate locked. Cosette doesn’t consider herself prideful, but she isn’t too modest to see reality.

But if Marius is in trouble...

Or if she sees Éponine...

She is old enough to decide for herself. Her father will not stop her. “I won’t leave, I promise.”

“Good,” he says. He hesitates at her doorway, seeming at a loss, before he steps forward with a jerky step and bends to kiss her forehead. “My child.”

Then he’s gone. Cosette, with worse things to think about, wonders what was in the note he was holding.

* * *

Two nights pass before her father returns.

She spends them alone in the house, all the windows drawn closed and the candles lit. Gunshots sound from down the street, and dark figures run through the streets, and Cosette does not feel safe.

She refuses to go into the garden, and she can’t focus enough to read, which leaves her old pastime of going through her father’s possessions for a hint of his past.

She indulges herself halfheartedly and finds nothing. The same old questions, with the same lack of answers. The candlesticks that were made for a bishop are the only thing he’s kept from the time before he adopted her, and she still has no idea _how_ he got such valuable items. He must have grown up with a family - he must have had people he loved. But she has never found any hint of them, and she’s too agitated to make any real progress now.

Eventually, she ends up in the sitting room going over the draperies. She doesn’t _enjoy_ reviewing the patterns to ensure they’re fashionable enough - or whatever her father thinks women _do_ with draperies, as she certainly doesn’t know - but the fabric is nice to run her fingers along and the pit in her stomach deepens for every minute she sits on her bed in silence.

Her father is brave and strong, but he’s foolhardy and something has spooked him recently. Cosette doesn’t know what he’s out doing, but she’s sure it isn’t good.

Besides. Besides, it has been two days, and she’s heard nothing from Marius. All she hears are screams and gunshots and it _aches_ to imagine what must have happened to him.

It’s odd, how quickly her life has rearranged itself. It has only been three days since she first saw Marius in the market, a passing glimpse, and now it seems her every thought revolves around him.

When she isn’t thinking of Marius or her father, she considers Éponine. Thénardier must be in business in Paris - was probably planning on robbing Cosette herself, she eventually realizes.

When did Éponine come to Paris? Cosette and her father keep their heads down, but people know of them - Cosette, especially, has friends, makes the society page once in a while. Éponine might have heard of her. Certainly it’s more likely than her seeing Éponine on the street in passing.

She pauses with her fingers on the heavy embroidery draped over the side of the couch.

Éponine _had_ heard of her. She found Cosette’s house for Marius.

Why, then, didn’t she say anything? Cosette would have welcomed her with open arms. Cosette would have been _overjoyed_ to see her, and would have done anything in her power to see her again, regardless of her father’s wishes.

She thinks back to their childhood, to the bashful feelings of a teenaged girl. She would give anything to see Éponine again. Did Éponine not- were her feelings different? Did she not care?

 _No,_ thinks Cosette, remembering the way Éponine had grabbed her hand and defended her against her parents. Even if she didn’t feel the same way that Cosette did - with an odd mix of nausea, fear, joy, and bashfulness - she still _loved_ her. That should be enough for one meeting, at least.

There’s a bang at the front door, and Cosette jumps, nearly tearing the fabric in half. She’d chosen the sitting room because it was at the center of the house, but now someone is coming in and she has no way to escape.

“Cosette?”

It’s her father. Cosette lets out a deep breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“Papa!”

She rushes out of the sitting room, down the stairs into the hall. Her father is standing there. He’s covered in mud and stinks horribly, but it’s _him_ , alive and safe.

Then she notices what he’s holding.

Her hand goes to her face. “Marius...?”

The body draped over her father’s shoulder doesn’t move. “He’s wounded,” explains her father. “He needs a doctor.”

“You-”

She can’t think of what to say. She’d thought- she doesn’t know what she’d thought about what he was doing, but she’d never imagined he was somehow _at_ the barricades.

“Is he alive? Oh, God, please let him be alive.”

“He’s alive,” says her father. “I need to put him down. A boy on the street is getting the doctor, but he needs to get out of these rags.”

Cosette steps aside without thinking about it, still having trouble wrapping her mind around what’s happened. “What were you doing at the barricades? How did you get him here?”

 _Where are the others,_ she thinks, but already knows the answer.

“I had help,” says her father, walking into the kitchen and setting Marius down on the center table. Marius is pale, his face creased in pain, and there’s so much blood. It’s everywhere.

Cosette has never felt faint at anything, but for the first time she understands the impulse.

“Would you get his friend some new clothes?”

“Of- of course,” says Cosette, unwilling to pull her eyes away from Marius’ face. “Please-”

She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what he knows. She turns and forces herself to leave the room before she gives everything away.

Standing in the hallway is Éponine.

Cosette reaches for the doorframe and resists the urge to burst into loud, hysterical laughter.

“Cosette-” says Éponine. She’s got a hand over her ribs, like she’s in pain. Her clothing is filthy, like Cosette’s father’s, and she has a cap over her hair, and her eyes are wide like she wasn’t expecting this, even though she must have known whose house this is and she _must_ have heard Cosette’s father call for Cosette just a few moments ago.

Cosette has never seen anything more beautiful.

“Éponine-” she says, and steps forward before she can stop herself. It is only through long, long years of high society that she manages to keep her hands to herself. “Éponine, you have saved my- I would never-”

She means to say something about how much Marius means to her, or maybe how bleak life would have seemed without him, or possibly a comment on the weather. But Éponine knows all of that already.

Instead, Cosette gives into impulse and cups Éponine’s cheek in her hand. The way she leans into it proves something - and makes Cosette’s heart grow five times in the space of a single second with all the love she feels. “I am so, so happy to see you,” she says. “Éponine-”

Éponine is crying. “Seeing you in the market has been the best part of my days,” she says.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were in Paris?” Cosette asks, running her thumb over Éponine’s cheekbone to collect her tears. “I would have been- I would have done anything to see you again, to get you out of that tavern.”

“I didn’t- I didn’t think you would want to see me,” says Éponine. “I’m- look, your dress is getting dirty.”

“For God’s- I don’t care about my _dress,_ ” says Cosette, hiccuping into laughter, and is surprised to find she’s crying as well. “Éponine, ma chérie, of course I would have wanted to- you’re my best friend, my oldest companion, my first-”

She stops talking before she can give anything else away, but from the look in Éponine’s eye, she seems to understand regardless.

“I have dreamed about seeing you again ever since you left,” whispers Éponine.

Cosette tilts her head and brings her forehead to rest against Éponine’s, pulling up her free hand to hold her other cheek. “As have I,” she says, and for all of her caution it feels like a confession of something. “Every day,” she swears.

* * *

Marius recovers, slowly. Éponine regains her strength faster, but winces with unexpected pain more often. Cosette’s father pays for the doctors, the clothing, and hosts Marius in the guest room - leaving Cosette to host Éponine in her room.

She is unable to convince Éponine that she’ll be fine on the couch - instead they share the bed, both too stubborn to let the other be anything less than comfortable. They wake up in the mornings curled up the way they did when they were children and carefully speak around any discussion of it. Not without Marius.

Cosette is all too aware of how close she came to losing both of them that night. Éponine was wounded returning from delivering the note - the note from Marius, the note that Cosette’s father was holding when he told her he was leaving to the barricades.

(She is trying to forgive that.)

Marius was wounded in the final battle. Without Cosette’s father, both of them would probably be dead.

Her father is walking more slowly, more stiffly. Cosette brings him hot tea in the evenings and helps him with his boots. She will never be able to thank him enough for saving them.

Marius is quiet, grieved by the loss of his friends. Éponine, too, is mourning her brother. Cosette has not lost anyone - by the grace of God, has everything she has ever wanted. She does her best to reach both of them in their darkness.

“Marius,” she says one day, seated on the couch in the sitting room. Éponine is pacing a restless circuit around the room. “Marius, come sit down. You should not stand for so long.”

He’s standing at the end of the room, gazing out the window. It doesn’t sound like he’s heard her.

“Marius,” she says, standing and going over to him. She takes his hands. “Every day you walk with stronger step, you walk with longer step. The worst is over.”

He turns to look at her. “Every day, I wonder every day- why? Why am I here?”

“We can’t begin to understand why things are,” says Éponine, turning towards them. “You _are_ here. We are both here. Cosette is with us.”

“Think of all the years ahead of us,” says Cosette. “I will never leave you- either of you.” She reaches out a hand to Éponine, who takes it, although they’re both still focused on Marius. “Isn’t this enough?”

“Of course- of course it is,” he says, glancing at Éponine. His expression warms, becomes less lost. “Of course it is. It will always be enough. But- I don’t _understand._ Why did I survive? Why am I here when they are not?”

“None of us can know God’s plans,” says Cosette, reaching out to him. “Do _good,_ Marius. That is all anyone can ask.”

“Yes-” says Marius. He reaches out and takes Cosette’s hand to press a kiss to the back of it, roughly. “You’re right.”

He releases Cosette’s hand, turning to Éponine. “You’re both right.”

He takes her hand and brings it to his lips slowly - doesn’t look away from her face as he kisses it, gentle in a way that Cosette knows Éponine has only rarely experienced. “I would do well to listen to you always.”

“When you’re going to be so foolish that I have to go into battle to keep you safe-” hisses Éponine, frowning, but her face is flushed. She doesn’t pull her hand back.

Cosette can’t breathe for loving both of them.

“I was thinking,” she says, and takes a deep breath. “I think you should get married.”

Éponine turns bright red. Marius smiles at her- but then he turns to Cosette, his expression dropping into concern. “But you-”

“No one will say anything about a wealthy spinster,” she says, attempting confidence with a movement of her wrist. It’s one thing to daydream idly - quite another to almost _order_ them to get married.

_Oh, Cosette, you’ve gone too far this time._

Too late to go back now. If she’s going to chase them off, may as well argue her entire case first.

“Besides, the Pontmercy name will keep Thénardier away, won’t it, Éponine?”

“Your father?” asks Marius, turning back to Éponine. He’s _confused._

Éponine still hasn’t told him anything, then.

“Unless he decides to ‘collect his dues’,” Éponine says to Cosette. She ignores Marius’ confusion. “But I suppose I would be able to throw him out. Even he cannot fight a noble name.”

Marius, pushing away his confusion, turns back to Cosette. “How will we see you? How will you- will you live away from us?”

Cosette smiles at him and doesn’t let her hands shake. “The new Madame Pontmercy would not mind my staying with you to help with the daily business, would she?”

“Of course not,” says Éponine. “Of _course_ not.” She reaches forward and sets her hand on Cosette’s shoulder. The weight of it sends feeling all down her back.

“Marius-” Cosette says, and has to stop for a moment. Her voice is too faint. “Marius, will you marry Éponine?”

They both look at Éponine. Marius takes her hand. “Every day for the rest of my life, if she wished.”

Éponine, who’d calmed a little at the discussion of her father, is flushed again. “Éponine,” Cosette says. “Will you marry Marius?”

Éponine takes a deep breath, tightens her hand on Cosette’s shoulder. “I would like nothing more,” she says, her voice low.

“And you, Cosette?” asks Marius, looking at her. “What will you do?”

Cosette’s father is resting downstairs.

She smiles, pulls Éponine’s hand off her shoulder, turns and tugs Éponine ever closer-

and kisses her.

She pulls back, just barely, so she can feel the breath from Éponine’s lips. “This,” she whispers, watching Éponine very closely. She has been waiting her whole life for this.

Éponine swallows, her eyes on Cosette’s. “Good.”

Cosette pulls back and turns to Marius. “And this as well, I think.”

She takes Marius by the shoulder and tugs him closer, kisses him as well.

Marius brushes his nose against hers as he pulls his head back. He clears his throat, staring at her. “Uh- Yes. Good.”

“Oh-” says Éponine, and jerks Marius’ face to the side so she can kiss him as well. Marius- well, the correct word is _melts._

Cosette grins. “Very good, I think.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi [on tumblr](https://smallblueandloud.tumblr.com)! i am currently in the throes of a steven universe hyperfixation, so if you've ever wanted someone to have extremely aggressive pearl feelings in your general direction, shoot me an ask lmao. i hope you're well!


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